Duchess by Susan May Warren

doing here? You gotta go back to LA. Sheesh, Roxy, what are you thinking? Dash is in a coma, and you’re here on the set?”
    She stared at him. Trying to fit his words into her head. “What?”
    â€œDon’t you read the papers?” Jerry signaled to someone behind her. “Dashielle Parks shot himself last night.”
    She couldn’t move. Just stared at Rooney. Dash—shot… “What are you talking about?”
    She pressed her gloved hand to her chest. She—couldn’t—breathe…
    â€œAw, Roxy. Ya didn’t know.” Rooney looked immediately sorry, his rare compassion budding forth. “Eddie, take Miss Price to the hangar.”
    He came up, touched her cheek. “We’ll take care of this, darling. I got a plane for you. You go home and be with Dash.” He kissed her on the cheek.
    She caught his hand. “Why did Dash—are you sure? But I just talked to him—”
    â€œI don’t know, doll.” He squeezed her hand then turned back to the dogfight.
    And what about Rolfe?
    Eddie slipped his arm around her waist, turned her back to the car.
    But…
    She climbed in, her legs nearly numb. Kept her eyes on the wreckage on the horizon as Eddie pulled away toward the hangar.
    She said nothing as she watched the plume of black smoke as fire destroyed the final remains of Rolfe’s warplane.
    â€œI found him on the patio. We were supposed to have lunch, and when he didn’t answer the door, naturally, I thought he might be on the telephone. I didn’t expect—I didn’t—Oh Roxy, there was blood everywhere…. How could he…?”

    Fletcher sat on the wooden chairs in the hallway of St. Vincent’s Catholic Hospital. Somewhere, through the wooden doors of the ward behind him, Dash’s body lay in a coma, a ventilator pumping air into his body, a hole next to his heart where he’d pointed a Colt .45 at his chest and pulled the trigger.
    She still couldn’t get Fletcher’s words into her head, her heart.
    She stared at him, exhaustion bleeding through her. She still heard the buzzing of the prop in her ears, pretty sure that the flight in one of Rooney’s warplanes from Oakland to LA had jarred free her teeth from her head.
    Thankfully, a representative from the studio met her, but he’d abandoned her at the hospital door to plow through the gauntlet of press on her own.
    Only to find Fletcher distraught and unraveling, pacing outside Dash’s hospital room. He took one look at her and sank into a chair, wearing his age on his gaunt face.
    â€œHow bad is it?” She glanced through the window in the doors of the private ward. Nurses, the sisters of St. Vincent Catholic hospital, moved in and out of the ward carrying supplies, occasionally offering her a condolent smile.
    â€œIt’s bad. He shot himself in the chest. If I hadn’t shown up, he would have bled to death.”
    â€œAnd his heart?”
    â€œHe had surgery to fix a tear, his lung collapsed.” He ran his hands down his face. “They told me that it’s not looking good. They’ll be surprised if he survives the night.”
    She walked up to the window and peered in. Dash lay in a bed beyond her view, a curtain pulled for privacy.
    Probably so the world didn’t have to watch him die.
    She turned away. Tried to get ahold of how everything had suddenly careened so wildly out of control.
    â€œI don’t understand; why would he do this?”
    She looked up to see one of the studio agents manhandling a photographer from his stealthy perch in the hallway.
    Rosie turned her back to him. She was still dressed in her sundress, ready to take back her destiny with Rolfe, who may or may not have perished in a flaming crash for Rooney Sherwood’s epic motion picture.
    Oh, she had just about enough of the stench of death, of the sense of her life slipping through her fingers.
    â€œFletcher, I